88 Sam Gendreau ∙ Lingholic.com ∙ foreign languages My TOP 3 articles: How to Remember Words When Learning a Language Learning a Foreign Language – 10 Most Common Mistakes Do You Really Want to Improve Your Pronunciation? About me: My name is Sam, and I’m a passionate traveller and language learner. I currently live in Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, where I work at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development. I’ve been running my website, Lingholic, since late 2012, and it’s been growing ever since! I love to learn new languages, and help others do it too. My philosophy is that language learning is a journey, not a destination. Besides my native French, I can speak English, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese to varying degree of proficiency. In September 2014 I won an international Korean speaking contest. It was organized by Korea’s largest broadcasting corporation, KBS, and saw applicants from 44 countries around the world showcase their Korean skills through three rounds of elimination. As the Grand Prize Winner, I was invited to spend a week in Seoul where I participated in various broadcasting events, including on national radio, to showcase my knowledge of the Korean language and culture. It was pretty exciting! In the future, I’m looking forward to continuing honing my skills especially in Korean, Spanish, and Chinese. If I were to start learning an entirely new language, it’d probably be a Southeast Asian language like Thai, Vietnamese, or Burmese, but frankly learning just about any language is a fascinating experience, so I’m open to pretty much anything! MY TIPS & TRICKS FOR: learning vocabulary I’m a big believer that context is king in language learning. Words do not have any meaning in isolation. A single word can have literally hundreds of different meaning in any given language (think about the verb “get” in English). That’s why it’s important to learn collocations, or groupings of words in a sentence, through as much exposure to the language as possible. Learning decontextualized lists of words is a very inefficient way to go. learning grammar Grammar is, of course, very important. But to make sense of grammar rules, you need to have been exposed to the language first. Sadly, grammar is often taught the other way around. So what I always recommend is to approach it from a top‐down approach. You look at the big picture first, and then as you go, you figure out the details. I think it’s especially important not to make grammar a priority in the early stages of learning. As you reach a high beginner or intermediate stage, then learning grammar can bring large benefits.
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